This does sound like a good thing in general; both the Linux Foundation and Intel have better track records of real open development than Nokia do, and the noise about 'completely open source' is pretty hopeful.

As for the RPM vs deb wars - get over it already, there are really no substantial differences left, RPM systems have long since added proper dependency handling, and debs have (more or less) added proper signatures. They're now different, but essentially equivalent, solutions to the same problem.

Interesting times, anyway.